2019-1 Touring Car Championship season
The 2019-1 IVRC Touring Car Championship season will be the 2nd IVRC TCC season. Marc Stwerka of Repsol Swinegel Racing is the defending drivers' champion, while MPG Competition is the defending teams' champion. IVRC will bring on several changes to the series, including a new calendar format in 2019 by splitting the year into two seperate seasons of TCC. This is due to the concept that a shortened championship usually gets a lot more action-filled compared to a full-year season, along with other minor benefits. Teams and Drivers | valign="top" | |} Changes Sporting regulations Not only has IVRC announced that 2019 will be splitted into two seasons, but also several changes to TCC's sporting regulations. Each event will now host three instead of two races, however with a shortened race distance of 15 instead of 20 minutes each. This should compensate for the number of lost races due to the shortened calendar, making up 30 races in total. Also, IVRC introduced a new points distributions system, moving away from the famous F1 points scheme and adapting the all-new 2019 WTCR points distributions system. In consequence, not only the top ten of each race but the top 15 will be awared by points. Unlike WTCR however, TCC will not give bonus points for Qualifying. As a consequence of heavy critizism during the 2018 season, the teams' championship saw minor changes aswell. While only teams with two or more entries were eligible to score points towards the teams' championship in the previous season, all teams are now eligible to fight for the teams' championship. A rather drastical change will come with the weight penalties, as they will see their premiere in 2019-1 in TCC. This affects only Race 1 of each round, where the best drivers of the 1st race of the previous round will carry a weight penalty after Qualifying to bring the competition closer together. IVRC made the decision to add weight penalties for Race 1 only based on the fact that the quicker drives will be penalized by reverse grids in Race 2 and 3 already. Finally, IVRC introduced a Rookie Cup sub championship for rookies. Each driver who hasn't competed at more then three events in 2018 will be eligible to score points towards the Rookie Cup. The scoring system will be identical to the main championship, giving 25 points for the rookie winner each race. Technical regulations Several car models and manufactures have been dropped for the 2019-1 TCC season. While Ford and Opel had to leave the series with their Focus ST and Astra OPC Cup respectively, two manufacturers upgraded their cars to more actual models. While SEAT changed their whole brand to feature the CUPRA León TCR instead of the León Cup Racer, Audi changed from the TT Cup to it's latest RS3 LMS model. Honda planned to introduce the new Honda Civic Type-R TCR (FK8), however the plans were abandoned in the last minute and a facelifted version of the Civic TCR (FK2) will remain for at least another season on the grid. Peugeot and Alfa Romeo won't see any changes for 2019-1. Also the mod has been improved even further, especially in the brakes area. During the late stages of the 2018 season, critizism of the weak and rather inconsistent brakes came up from several drivers. After a detailed inspection by IVRC, this issue was found to be caused by too much air flow through the cooling pods, cooling the brakes down below their performance window. The faulty parts will be fixed for 2019-1. Race calendar and results A provisional ten-round calendar was announced on 2 February 2018. Testing Championship results Scoring system Points were awarded to the top 15 classified finishers in all three races equally. Drivers' championship Notes: * † – Driver did not finish the race, but was classified as he completed more than 50% of the race distance. Teams' championship Notes: * only the two best results of each round counted towards the teams' championship. Constructors' championship Rookies' cup Category:Touring Car Championship Category:2019